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Wishing You A Happy Thanksgiving Day

Wishing all you RTF'ers a wonderful, memorable, and safe Thanksgiving Day!

A very special thanks to all the mods for keeping this site fun and enjoyable. And to Chris and all the sponsors that make it possible for the world wide retriever community to share a place on the world wide web!

Juli

God answers prayers all the time. Even the ones we don't know we asked. God is Good (always)

"There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle."

I want to thank my mom and my dad for the upbringing I had. They were young kids themselves when they got started in parenthood. Frankly, my last name could be "accident" as well as it could be "Atkinson" because they got off to an unplanned start and overcame lots of adversity as mere kids themselves.

I'm thankful to NAHRA and the hunt test programs. It was through NAHRA that I met my wife. She had two labs. I had two labs. We met, got along pretty well, found common ground, and became the canine Brady Bunch. As our pack began the journey towards geriatrics, the good lord blessed us with not one, but two healthy sons. Dog games have brought me most of my closest friends today.

I'm thankful for dog training and the outdoors. To me, the retriever world is therapeutic. It is what keeps me sane amongst market overcapacity, downsizing, economic downturns, corporate takeovers, and all the other stressful stuff that hammers on my psyche.

I'm thankful for organized sports, particularly wrestling, for helping me understand the value of teamwork, winning, losing, hard work, and sportsmanship. I'm thankful for Penn State University and Beta Theta Pi Fraternity where I learned the value of interpersonal relationships, and leadership.

I'm thankful for the health that the good lord has granted my wife, and my kids.

I'm thankful for the good friends that have become part of my and my family's life.

The list could continue...

Thanks to each of you for making RTF so much fun to be a part of.

RTF exists, because I was a kid with a 3M tape featuring Mike Mathiot, who had sketchy info on how to train a dog. I barely had the money to buy the VCR, and my uncle gave me the tape. I had not even scrounged up the money to buy Richard Wolters' WATERDOG yet.

When I tried to reach Mike via 3M, I was shut out and given the runaround. When I asked local folks how to get over some roadblocks in training, I was told to contact the local pro (whom I could not afford then).

Why does RTF truly exist? It exists in memory of a poem that all pledges at the Penn State Beta house had to memorize called "The Bridge"....pasted here:

I want to thank my mom and my dad for the upbringing I had. They were young kids themselves when they got started in parenthood. Frankly, my last name could be "accident" as well as it could be "Atkinson" because they got off to an unplanned start and overcame lots of adversity as mere kids themselves.

I'm thankful to NAHRA and the hunt test programs. It was through NAHRA that I met my wife. She had two labs. I had two labs. We met, got along pretty well, found common ground, and became the canine Brady Bunch. As our pack began the journey towards geriatrics, the good lord blessed us with not one, but two healthy sons. Dog games have brought me most of my closest friends today.

I'm thankful for dog training and the outdoors. To me, the retriever world is therapeutic. It is what keeps me sane amongst market overcapacity, downsizing, economic downturns, corporate takeovers, and all the other stressful stuff that hammers on my psyche.

I'm thankful for organized sports, particularly wrestling, for helping me understand the value of teamwork, winning, losing, hard work, and sportsmanship. I'm thankful for Penn State University and Beta Theta Pi Fraternity where I learned the value of interpersonal relationships, and leadership.

I'm thankful for the health that the good lord has granted my wife, and my kids.

I'm thankful for the good friends that have become part of my and my family's life.

The list could continue...

Thanks to each of you for making RTF so much fun to be a part of.

RTF exists, because I was a kid with a 3M tape featuring Mike Mathiot, who had sketchy info on how to train a dog. I barely had the money to buy the VCR, and my uncle gave me the tape. I had not even scrounged up the money to buy Richard Wolters' WATERDOG yet.

When I tried to reach Mike via 3M, I was shut out and given the runaround. When I asked local folks how to get over some roadblocks in training, I was told to contact the local pro (whom I could not afford then).

Why does RTF truly exist? It exists in memory of a poem that all pledges at the Penn State Beta house had to memorize called "The Bridge"....pasted here: